I have almost 60 years worth of TRAINS, MR, Craftsman, and a lot of years of various other train and model magazines. I consider them to have value and am downsizing. Where can one find a home for such a collection??? trainmaster1017
Donate them to a local library or your local hobby shop. Due to shipping weight, they don’t have much value unless you can find a local buyer.
Kalmbach library of the NMRA takes donations, but has restrictions and you pay shipping:
“The Library appreciates all donations of books, periodicals, and railroad memorabilia. Due to space constraints, we request that donations of Model Railroader, Railroad Model Craftsman, Trains and NMRA Bulletin, would include issues only prior to 1950 or after 1990. Donations may be sent “Library Rate” through the postal service.”
Their page is http://library.nmra.org/
Local organizations such Railroad Historical Societies, Model railroading clubes, etc may take them also - they usually sell them at train shows.
Good luck
Paul
Some of these groups actually give the magazines away at shows, usually to kids or youth, in the hopes that something in the magazines will spark a greater interest in model railroading down the road. Seems like a pretty worthwhile use for your back issues.
Tom
Is there a model RR club in your area? The club I belong to has a library and we have a fairly complerte set. When we get mag. donations that we already have, we sell them at our open house each year. It does bring in some extra cash that we can always use.
Otherwise, I guess you could divide them up by year and sell them on eBay.
Is there a model RR club in your area? The club I belong to has a library and we have a fairly complete set. When we get mag. donations that we already have, we sell them at our open house each year. It does bring in some extra cash that we can always use.
Otherwise, I guess you could divide them up by year and sell them on eBay.
I have lots of space for such a collection at my home in VA Beach. A library will put a collection like that into storage and it will not be seen again, donating to a public organization is a death sentence for the paper the mags are made from.
Donate or sell to modelers such as myself that can appreciate the information contained in those mags.
Club I belong to also has a library of past MRs. We get these donations of past issues, and sometimes I wish we didn’t. We now have boxes of extras cluttering up the place, waiting for our annual open house to get here so that we can give them away.
The little kids seem to appreciate them, because they view it as someone giving them a present. However, the thought that we are just transferring our unwanted items to someone else always is in the back of my mind.
Selling them at the open house is always an option. But there is a downside to this. The only people likely to want an old magazine are probably already in the hobby. The majority of the visitors we get are john q. public, and they are bringing the kids down because they saw a writeup in the local paper last Sunday. We ask for a donation to come in, but it is a donation not a requirement. So when john q. p. sees that we are selling items, they figure that is how we are making money so why should they otherwise donate.
Donating them to a club that has an outreach program or trainshow is a good idea – we use donation of mags at the Lansing Model RR Club as giveaways to kids and newbies to the hobby as well as to the Boy Scouts that come to us to earn their merit badges in MRing. If you are looking for $, donate them to a club or organization that is non-profit, 501c3. You would be able to write your donation off on your taxes, which is more than what you would probably get if you were trying to sell them. Just an idea…
Chuck